On Monday night, June 8th, the Rocky Mount City Council will consider a new budget that includes increases to the property tax in addition to water and sewer rates. The property tax increase is to build the event center when it has not even been approved by the City Council or the NC Local Government Commission.

Increase current property tax rate of $0.58 to $0.60 (3.33% increase) or $0.605 (4.13% increase) by 2019 the plan is to increase property taxes to $0.6385 (9.16% increase)

On Monday, June 22nd, the Edgecombe County Commissioners will consider a new budget that includes a substantial property tax increase of $0.075 (7.73% increase). This will move Edgecombe County from the third highest property tax rate in North Carolina to the second highest. Currently Northhampton County has a tax rate of $0.92 and Scotland County has a tax rate of $1.03.

Edgecombe County side of the City of Rocky Mount

The Edgecombe side of Rocky Mount will have a property tax rate 19% higher than the Nash side of Rocky Mount. Currently there is a 15.25% property tax difference for the same jurisdictions.

Cary or Raleigh I would understand. This is crazy. We are one of the very few places in the country that have not come out of the housing crisis. Evan our last cal realtors encourage people to buy outside the city because of high utilities and taxes. I feel like our council is blind. I predict in 10 years, unless things change, all of Englewood and sunset Ave. will be low rent housing and they we will look back to this time and say the event center was the straw that broke the camels back.

If drawing people to the area is the plan, then this is definitely not the way to do it. I’ve lived here for most of my life and now find myself thinking about relocating. It’s obvious our city council is incompetent and if they aren’t careful, Rocky Mount will continue to become a community no one cares to join.

I live on the Edgecombe side of Rocky Mount a retiree living on a fixed income. After working in Rocky Mount for over 45 years, paying taxes, keeping my property in good repair, my yard neat, volunteering on various committees for the betterment of our community and being a watchful neighbor, I guess the only thing that will be left for me next year is abandon my home. I have done everything to cut my utility bill to the point that this winter, I closed off all of my home except my kitchen and den which has a half bath. I slept in my den with a space heat just so I could try to keep my utility bill within my budget. With the proposed increase in my utility bill, my city taxes and my county taxes, I will not be able to continue to live in my home. When I was working and ran into hardship due to medical bills, and couldn’t pay my taxes by the deadlines my paycheck was garnished and my state income tax was taken. With these increases , when I can pay my taxes, where will the city and county take the money from, my social security and small pension? With the increase in utilities, I guess I can go back to hauling water from a neighbor, burning a kerosene lamp and using a kerosene heater until I am evicted from the home I paid for in 2001 for lack of unpaid taxes.
You may think this sound extreme but its NOT.
We will have an Event Center in Rocky Mount, a showplace for the wealthy who live outside the city and can leave the inner city and return to the exclusivity of their neighborhoods. Just make sure there are some grates on near the event center for the homeless to sleep in the winter.

I do not live in Rocky Mount, but I do live in Northampton County mentioned as the second highest taxed county in NC. I would encourage your commissioners to take a look at what happened to the Roanoke Rapids area when they tried a similar plan which blew up in their faces and has hurt the whole area economically, causing small businesses to fold, and people leaving the area. I would plead to them to not be spending money they don’t have. this is not the time to be spending anything unnecessarily.

The Edgecombe County Commissioners REALLY wants to raise our taxes 7.5 cents this year. They raised our taxes 4-5 cents last year and they plan to do a property reevaluation next year!! Exactly how much do they think we can stand?? They recently spent millions of dollars to move the Tarboro Social Service offices down town while the old office buildings sits idle……….and while we were getting tax dollars on the downtown building. We support TWO of all of the Social Services offices already—one in Tarboro and another on the Edge. Co. side of RM. What sane industry is going to locate to a county with the highest tax rate in North Carolina? Who is going to be left in Tarboro and Edgecombe County when the remaining young people leave Edgecombe Co. to avoid their high taxes—and to find jobs due to our high unemployment. These types of decisions need to be changed and they can—at the polls, immediately!!

I think that it is wrong for the City Council to add additional increases tp the people of Rocky Mount for an event center that no one wants but the City council members. Why not let the people vote on these issues that will affect everyone in Nash and Edgecombe counties.